Ed Cumming reviews the penultimate episode of the second series of Game
of Thrones, HBO's complex fantasy drama adapted from George RR Martin's
popular novels.

First a bit of housekeeping. Over the past few weeks some of you have seen fit to use the comments section below these reviews to post spoilers not of the series, but of the books that the series is based on. Please don't. I'm reviewing Game of Thrones as a television series, not as a book. For those of you having trouble with this distinction, think of a television series as a book, but divided into chapters and represented on screen. If someone was reviewing a book chapter by chapter, it would be annoying if someone else revealed that the butler did it at the bottom. If you want to discuss the books, there are several excellent places to do it, not least westeros.org, but not here.

Right. Phew. On to tonight's episode, which was a grand spectacular in the truest sense. I don't mean to come over all gushing nerd-fanboy, but that's what I've become so that's what it will sound like. The whole series had been building to tonight, and the producers Dan Weiss and David Benioff wheeled out the artillery accordingly. George RR Martin himself wrote the script, and the British director Neil Marshall, who has Hollywood-budget-battle experience from Centurion, directed.

Stannis's (Stephen Dillane) fleet had finally arrived at King's Landing, where the Lannisters had to defend the walls of a city that hates them. It was the first big battle scene of the whole series – impressive, given that we have now watched about ten hours of solid civil war. Weiss and Benioff apparently had to plead with HBO to get extra money for this episode, and I'm not surprised. I've never filmed a fleet being blown up by wildfire myself, but it certainly didn't look cheap. It looked awesome. The Blackwater became an emerald inferno, as lethal as it was beautiful to watch.

In my reviews so far I have tried hard to avoid Lord of the Rings comparisons, but the battle for Helm's Deep was the only real point of reference for what came next. The difference was that as man after man died under waves of stones, arrows and swords, I really cared about the characters involved.

All of them, more or less. I thought Lena Headey, sometimes one of the weaker links, was superb as the gradually drunker Cersei, trapped in the Red Keep, raging at the impotence of being born a woman. I felt for Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), trapped between enemy forces and offered the thought of going home. I even felt for the Hound (Rory McCann), meanest of all the warriors, reminded by all the fire of the burns that ruined his face as a child.

Not Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), mind. Joffrey has to go. "The worst ones always live," said Sansa, and it seems sadly that this was true, yet again, of Joffrey.

Most of all, though, I felt for Tyrion (Peter Dinklage). Tyrion, bleeding into the shingle, having saved the day with neither Cersei nor Joffrey nor Tywin (Charles Dance) there to see it. He won the hearts of the men, but if the series has proved nothing else it's that the word of a single dysfunctional aristocrat is worth more than the love of all the peasants in Westeros. Surely this isn't the last of the imperious Imp? George RR Martin has been cruel to us in ninth episodes before, but even he can't have done it twice in a row. Can he?

As if the preceding hour hadn't been enough like an apocalyptic indie-nerd slaughter-orgy, the song over the closing credits, the Rains of Castomere, was by The National, the ultimate indie-nerd band. Next week's season finale will have a tough time topping this, but there are plenty of loose ends to tie up: what's going on with Dany's (Emilia Clarke) dragons? What's happening to Jon Snow (Kit Harington) in the north? Has Arya (Maisie Williams) escaped Harrenhal?

Just typing "season finale" has made me melancholic for the 10 months we will have to wait, after next week, until Game of Thrones is back on our screens. By turns violent, funny, moving and visually astonishing, "Blackwater" was a Hollywood epic condensed into an hour, made by grown-ups, for grown-ups, with heart and intelligence.